Chidambaram’s son pulls out all strings to retain his father’s legacy in Sivaganga

The sixth round of polls on Thursday is going to witness several hot seats across the country. Among others, the poll battle in Sivaganga (Tamil Nadu) is all set to be fierce and interesting. Reason: Union finance minister P Chidambaram’s son Karti is leaving no stone unturned to retain his father’s legacy, while BJP is considering it as a ‘prestige’ battle – to be more precise to make a mark in Tamil Nadu.

The union finance minister is not contesting the election fearing his defeat and he has decided to field his son from the Sivaganga seat.

The state consists of 39 constituencies and the scheduled date of polling is on 24 April. Political experts feel that BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s meeting with superstar Rajnikanth might give some advantage to the party because his (Rajnikanth) clout was proven in 1996, when he made a public statement against AIADMK – ‘Even God can’t save Tamil Nadu if you vote for Jayalalithaa’.

Then his statement came as a sigh of relief for the DMK-Tamil Maanila Congress alliance, which swept the state polls and Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK lost both the assembly and Lok Sabha polls.

BJP candidate H Raja, a chartered accountant by profession, is working hard to secure this seat but he personally feels there is a Modi wave across the nation and it will work in Sivaganga too. On the other side the DMK (who has fielded S. Durairaj) has weakened by internal family feuds but expected to manage good percentage as compare to AIDMK’s PR Senthilnathan, who is contesting from the same seat and considered as not so popular.

Speaking to the Millennium Post BJP leader Raja claimed that the AIADMK supremo made a mistake by not fielding Raja Kannappan, who lost narrowly to Chidambaram in 2009, with only 3,300 votes.

‘Interestingly then DMK was there ally and despite that the winning margin was less. This time Congress is fighting alone and our chances of winning this seat is much high,’ he said.

He feels that in Tamil Nadu, the vote is now fragmented beyond the AIADMK and DMK and this could give them some surprising results especially after their rainbow alliance with political parties including DMDK, MDMK, PMK and two smaller parties.

‘In this situation I personally feel that the BJP-led Front might come out with some surprises and if you see the 2011 assembly polls this group managed to secure nearly 17 per cent vote share,’ he says.

It is expected that Chennai South, Coimbatore and Kanyakumari might bring some good results for the BJP. Apart from Sivaganga, the Congress in other seats also might not bring some good results because of their ‘candy’ relation with Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapakse, who is considered as anti-Tamil.

Some of the senior leaders of all the parties who are going to flex their muscles on 24 April are DMK’s TR Baalu, former Union ministers Dayanidhi Maran (Chennai Central), A Raja (Nilgiri SC). They (Maran and Raja) are both facing corruption charges in the 2G scam. Former Union minister Mani Shankar Iyer of the Congress, the PMK’s Anbumani Ramadoss and his NDA ally Vaiko of MDMK is also in the fray.

There are nearly, 5.50 crore eligible voters who will cast their votes in 60,817 polling stations across the state. Total 845 candidates, including 55 women aspirants are contesting election in Tamil Nadu.

In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the DMK-Congress alliance managed to secure 18 seats, the AIADMK won nine and the CPI and the CPI (M) one each. This time too it is expected to be a three corner fight.